When Our Survival Is Not Given

Push. Tilt. Breathe. The cadence of wheel, stroke, breath, and beep still lives in our bodies. From these echoes of sport, of institutions, of being breath-to-breath, we ask: what does it mean to train when survival is not given? What disciplines us, and what disciplines might yet sustain us otherwise? We are quick to valorize discipline in the making of elite subjects and quick to critique discipline for its docilizing effects. Yet Foucault's later work reminds us: danger is not only harm but also possibility. What disciplines us, what disciplines do we turn toward, and what disciplines might yet sustain us otherwise? Training can be coercive; it can also be a technology of the self. In this chapter, we write of benches as sites of wisdom, friction as both wound and traction, consent as a spectrum that shapes and is shaped by endurance, and exile as the cost too dear to bear. We turn toward disability justice and Anishinaabe treaty scholarship in considering our interrelational responsibilities. At the edge of exhaustion, we remember: play bends rules to keep us in play together. And that training in play, too, is training in remaining alive.